I created Micro.blog. I also have 2 podcasts: Core Intuition and Timetable.
You can send me an email: manton@micro.blog. (But if you have questions about Micro.blog, please use: help@micro.blog.)
Want to get a weekly email with the latest posts from my blog? You can subscribe on this page.
You can even follow my blog posts from Mastodon using: @manton@manton.org.
Want the longer story? I’ve been developing apps for the Mac and the web since the mid-1990s. My first year in college, I had an internship with Apple in Austin, running a computer lab for the training department and soaking up as much as I could about everything else. One day while I was there, the first WebEdge conference was held in the Apple building. Later, I would manage the WebEdge website and help organize the conferences, working for a web consulting company. I spoke at conferences. I dug into scripting and discovered apps like Frontier. So many things happened in this time, enough to fill a small book, but let’s move on.
In 1996, I joined Purity Software, a small software startup focused on Mac web server software. Those were the days of classic Mac OS, before Apple acquired NeXT. We ran servers with WebSTAR and cobbled together CGI scripts and server plug-ins, and we loved it. I built an app called WebSentinel. I attended my first WWDC in 1996, a turbulent time for Apple as they attempted to develop their own next-generation OS with Copland. A lot happened in those years too, and it helped shape my love for the web.
A year before the calendar flipped over to 2000, I was hired at another web consulting company, Interactive Ensemble, building websites for all sorts of clients, and eventually managing a small team of coders. We used PHP, SQL databases, and Linux. Sometimes I would build custom solutions like native PHP extensions for databases, or Java applets, trying to push what was possible. I was mostly insulated from the dot-com bubble, heads-down in work.
After I was married and my kids were born, it was time to get more serious about my career. I joined a startup called VitalSource in 2001 that specialized in e-book software, initially for dental schools, then nursing and other health sciences. I was with VitalSource for over 14 years! I first led work on the Mac app, in C++ and then expanding to Objective-C when Cocoa was available. I created the web version of Bookshelf, their flagship e-book reader, and even after passing those projects on to others, continued to work on server projects in Rails such as a system for syncing notes and highlights.
In 2002, I started my blog at manton.org, inspired by what I had seen and heard attending SXSW Interactive. I’ve been blogging ever since.
During my time at VitalSource, I continued to code on the side too, founding my own little indie software company Riverfold Software. I created a Mac app called Wii Transfer. I became fascinated with Twitter, joining as the 879th user and shipping my first indie iOS app Tweet Library in 2010. I had other apps like Clipstart, Watermark, and the Tweet Marker sync API, and the ups and downs of running a business were a frequent topic of discussion on my podcast Core Intuition with Daniel Jalkut. But there were frustrations with Twitter too, a period that is documented at length in my book Indie Microblogging.
Bridging the gap between a normal full-time job and my indie pursuits, I was lucky to work with my friend Jon Hays at Silverpine Software. I worked on iPhone apps and server APIs for a mix of clients. After so long working on a small set of apps, I got to help with more modern mobile apps, often starting from scratch with other developers.
When I ran the Kickstarter for Micro.blog at the beginning of 2017, I knew I had found what I was meant to work on. Micro.blog combined my love for the web, personally blogging, open APIs, and indie companies, fitting perfectly with all the skills I had developed along the way over a couple decades. Micro.blog is more than a pretty good blog hosting platform. It’s the distillation of everything I know and care about for the web. I hope to be working on it for many years to come.
